The character relationships in the whole story are full of discordant and unstable factors.
Barbara, played by Judi Dench, is a middle school history teacher and an unmarried old maid. The story begins with her voiceover dictating her diary. Her initial impression was that she was stern and hard to get close to, and that she described the people and things she saw poignantly in her diary.
Sheba, played by Cate Blanchett, is the new art teacher at the school, and her unusual beauty makes her the center of attention as soon as she enters the school. It's hard to imagine a woman as leisurely and beautiful as her, who is already a mother of two children.
Compared to Sheba's youth, her husband Richard is a little unexpectedly old. When Barbara visited the Shiba house for the first time, she saw Richard and thought she was going through the wrong door. The husband knows how to laugh at himself: "You think I should be ten times more handsome and twenty years younger". Later in the film, we know that Richard was Sheba's teacher and rescued her in her most difficult moments. The husband and wife formed by the love between teachers and students, and a 12-year-old mentally handicapped son, this family first revealed unstable messages.
Sheba and Barbara, two women who look very different, gradually become friends. Barbara began to relentlessly comment on Sheba and her family in her diary, and she could see that Sheba was not living a happy life. Barbara, on the other hand, is extremely enthusiastic about her quest for friendship with Sheba, as can be seen from the painstaking effort to dress up on her first visit to Sheba's house. There's something unusually weird going on here, but I just chalk it up to a lonely old woman's unusual desire for friendship.
Sheba's love affair with 15-year-old male student Steven may only be the first layer of the scandal. In this short-lived relationship, the underage Steven took the initiative everywhere, and he talked sweetly and followed him like a shadow; as a teacher, Shiba was more like an immature child, sinking without resistance.
Sheba is that kind of emotionally weak woman. She doesn't know how to defend herself, she doesn't know how to protect herself, she can tell everything about herself, and she can be persuaded by her soft words. So she poured out her heart to Barbara, fully exposing her past and thoughts to her eyes. So she couldn't resist the temptation of a 15-year-old boy, and Steven's lies could easily soften her heart.
I started out, like Sheba, hoping that the boy really fell in love with her. However, in the end, it was discovered that 15-year-old children already knew what "just play". Sheba paid her all, and what she got in return was endless heartbreak and beatings from the boy's mother.
After Barbara finds out that Sheba has a tryst with Steven, the peaceful story takes a sudden turn. Barbara's promise not to tell Sheba in exchange for Sheba's endless gratitude and a promise to end the relationship with Steven. Barbara's "friendship" with Sheba is also increasingly questionable. She would hide Sheba's blond hair, caress her arm ambiguous, and became even more jealous when she found out that Sheba had not broken up with Steven completely. This is no longer an explanation for a lonely woman's desire for friendship. When she hysterically asks Sheba to leave her family behind to see her dying cat, her scary side is finally revealed. What she seeks is not friendship, or even homosexuality, but the possession of desire. When she coldly and schemingly informs a colleague of Sheba's "scandal" who wants to go after Sheba, all the hideousness a woman can have is revealed. Later, through the mouth of the principal, we can also learn that Barbara used to have a good relationship with a young female teacher, but the woman eventually left the school and got married, and even applied to the court to enforce it: Barbara could not approach her within 500 yards.
Sheba nearly collapsed after the scandal came to light and moved into Barbara's house. It was here that she finally discovered Barbara's "scandal notes" and saw the deceit and possessiveness in this "friendship", and this always weak woman finally broke out madly. Compared to her indecent teacher-student relationship, Barbara's behavior is more like a real scandal.
The psychological horror of the film becomes even more apparent when Barbara sits down next to a young woman at the end of the film and begins a friendly conversation. From a certain point of view, this film can be made into a psychological suspense or psychological thriller type film. But fortunately, it finally appeared in the form of a drama film, peeling off the characters' hearts layer by layer, showing shocking ugliness and madness.
Finally, let's talk about the actors in the film.
Judi Dench once again delivered an outstanding performance. Not only the arrogance, indifference or tenderness common to her previous roles, but also the uncommon extremes of fear, despair and madness.
Cate Blanchett is all about elegance and beauty. I never thought she was an absolute beauty, but she could rely on her natural and charming temperament to shroud herself in a certain brilliance all the time. Sheba is undoubtedly the most sympathetic character in the film. His emotional sustenance for students and friends eventually came to nothing. Kate, who has hard lines, makes the weak Shiba very touching.
Sheba's husband Richard is also a well-known actor - Bill Nighy. The character I'm most impressed with is the crazy out-of-date rock star in "Love Actually," but he's probably best known now as Davy Jones in "Pirates of the Caribbean." The male characters in this film are still much weaker than the female characters. Richard's face is somewhat ambiguous. At first, he was careless about his wife's troubles, but in the end, he was understanding and allowed his wife to return to the family.
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